Righties are very, very angry about the SPLC's addition of future 2016 candidate Ben Carson's designation to their "extremist files" because of his radical and hateful statements about LGBT people.
"Marriage is between a man and a woman. It's a well-established pillar of society and no group, be they gays, be they NAMBLA [North American Man/Boy Association, a group advocating pedophilia], be they people who believe in bestiality--it doesn't matter what they are, they don't get to change the definition."
--Interview on Fox News' "Hannity," March 26, 2013
"[I]f we can redefine marriage as between two men or two women or any other way based on social pressures as opposed to between a man and a woman, we will continue to redefine it in any way that we wish, which is a slippery slope with a disastrous ending, as witnessed in the dramatic fall of the Roman Empire."
--America the Beautiful: Resdiscovering What Made This Nation Great, 2012 book written with Candy Carlson
"Obamacare is really the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery. And ... in a way, it is slavery."
--Values Voter Summit, Washington, D.C., Oct. 11, 2013
"I mean [our government and institutions] are very much like Nazi Germany. ... You know, you had a government using its tools to intimidate the population. We now live in a society where people are afraid to say what they really believe."
--Quoted by Breitbart News, March 12, 2014
Carson responded as one might expect. Writing for Breitbart News, he said ""When embracing traditional Christian values is equated to hatred, we are approaching the stage where wrong is called right and right is called wrong. It is important for us to once again advocate true tolerance."
He placed an exclamation point on that with this little gem. "It is nothing but projectionist when some groups label those who disagree with them as haters."
This goes far beyond disagreement. This is our American Taliban in action right here. This is someone in the public eye comparing health insurance to slavery, insinuating that gay people are child molesters and more.
Before Ben Carson starts extolling those things as Christian values, perhaps he should go back and pay attention to what Jesus did. My readings of the New Testament show no instance -- not one -- where he pointed his finger at people and said they were evil and horrible.
With all of that out of the way, let's look at who Bill O'Reilly invited on to defend the good doctor Carson. Kenneth Blackwell, from the Family Research Center.
Talk about bringing on the Taliban to defend ISIS. Media Matters:
On February 10, O'Reilly criticized the designation of Carson and invited FRC's Ken Blackwell on to discuss whether the SPLC was "straying from their mission." During the interview, Blackwell denounced the group as an "auxiliary operation of the political left," and admitted that FRC was designated a "hate organization" by the SPLC. Blackwell said that the designation of Carson as an anti-LGBT extremist is "ridiculous on its face." O'Reilly ended his interview with Blackwell by asking him whether he "consider[s] the Southern Poverty Law Center a hate group?"
We can always rely on Faux to rehabilitate those extremists while pointing their fingers (and viewers' eyes) in a different direction.
